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Western Visitors' Views of Russia and the Russians: Origin, Bias and National Mythology During the 16Th-19Th Centuries*

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Western Visitors' Views of Russia and the Russians: Origin, Bias and National Mythology During the 16Th-19Th Centuries* Western Visitors' Views of Russia and the Russians: Origin, Bias and National Mythology during the 16th-19th Centuries* Kim, Sang-Hyun** The Russian tends to deal only in extremes, and he is not particularly concerned to reconcile them To him, contradiction is a familiar thing. It is the essence of Russia West and East, extreme cold and extreme heat, exaggerated cruelty and exaggerated kindness, violent xenophobia and uncontrollable yearning for contract with the foreign world, simultaneous love and hate for the same objects: these are only some of the contradictions, which dominate the life of the Russian people. George F. Kennan)) This nation is composed of the most striking contrasts. Perhaps the reason lies in the mixture of EUropean civilization and Asiatic character. Madame de Stae!2l The Russian peasant had been living in the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century. George P. Fedotov3l * An earlier version of this paper was originally presented at the 2004 Conference of Association of Women of Slavic Studies (A WSS) at lllinois Summer Research Laboratory, Urbana-Champaign, 2004. This research was supported by the University of Illinois Russian, East European, and Eurasian Summer Research Laboratory and the U.S. Department of State Title VI Program. ** The University of Kansas, Lecturer. 1) George F. Kennan (967) Memoirs, 1925-1950, Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, pp. 528-529. 2) Germaine de Stael (2000) The Years of Exile, trans., A vriel H. Goldberger, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, p. 148. 3) George P. Fedotov (1960) The Russian Religious Mind. Kievan Christianity: the 10th to the 13th Centuries, New York: Harper Torchbooks, Vol. 1, p. 3. 2 I. Introduction: Theoretical Premise and Cultural Backgrounds for the Study Considering the fact that there has been much talks about the history of memory, to be more exact, about the cultural history as memory, it is true that relatively little research has been done either In Russian historiography or intellectual history. In particular, no comprehensive study of "the Other's views (qY:l<OH in Lotmanian and most Russian ethnographers' binary scheme)" of Russia and the Russians. In other words, the everyday life of Russian common people, OblTOBble :l<H3HH, seen from the eyes of Western visitors and travelers, has not draw scholarly attention. Rather, ample archival documents, personal journals, anecdotes, etc left by the outsiders need a meticulous reading and synthetic interpretation, as well. To answer this lingering question, however, we partly do follow Lotman's framework of "serniosphere" - a dynamic cultural system of symbols, stereotypes, and rituals that provide mechanisms of interpretation to members within a cultural community.4) One thing we should take into consideration is that Russian history and culture, especially of the nineteenth century, as such evolved "in the presence of an influential "other" in the form of the Western social and cultural experience."5) Indeed, as this paper shall explore, the first encounter between the West (the other, or qY:l<OH) with Russia (CBOH) and the idea-forces, which are a corollary of the countries' relations, provide an epochal-making springboard to further development of another periphery, which is not being structurally ordered yet.6) As usual, history 4) Jurij Lotman and Boris Uspenskij (1984) The Semiotics of Russian Culture, Ann Arbor, p. xii. 5) Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow and James L. West eds. (1991) Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. II. 6) Viewed from the perspective of history of mentalities, to use the French Annales school's concept, ideas become, like myths or value complexes, one of Western Visitors' Views of Russia and the Russians 3 as memory of a past and culture as a collective concept, both of which continue to live and to change as one society succeeds another, are always linked to each other, assuming the continuity of the ethical, intellectual, and spiritual life of the individual, society, and humankind,?) What all materials by the Western visitors to Russia might be defined as cultural memory by the Others. Viewed from this, the first chaotic and pejorative impressions that the Western viewers held became a center in their early stage of discovery of Russia and the Russians. When these "other" gradually turn into idea-forces in the Russian land and sneaked into the intellectual lives throughout the end of 18th century and the first three decades in the 19th century, they were replaced by the CBOH that took the shape of nuclei - structurally ordered elements - in almost disciplines in terms of debates, aspirated enthusiasm about the nations destiny, and all kinds of artistic inspirations.8) In relation to our conceptual scheme, we can take a brief look at James Billington's tripartite successive passages, all of which for me are well suited to figure out the basic characteristic of history of Russia. Though his premise is attempted from the standpoint of the Russian art, I believe that his understanding is quite palpable even to our further discussions at least at the first and second stage. To use his phrases: First, and without much warning, this seemingly proud and self-centered people suddenly takes over some new type of creative enterprise lock, stock, and barrel from precisely that more advanced foreign civilization which they had previously reviled. Second, having the collective forces by which men live their times, once the ideas are grasped through the circulation of the words. The idea-forces thus might offer the subsequent development of another periphery. 7) Jacques Le Goff (988) Medieval Imagination, Chicago and London: The University Chicago Press, p. 11. 8) Jurii M. Lotman and Boris A. Uspenskii (1985) "The Dynamic Model of a Semiotic System," in The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History, Ithaca, New York.: Cornell University Press, p. 74. 4 taken over in finished form someone else's exemplary model of a new art medium, they suddenly produced a stunningly original and even better version of their own' Finally, having lifted the new art form to a higher level, Russians themselves tend to cast it down and break it apart -leaving behind only fragments of their best creations for future generations.9) Here we catch a glimpse of hints at the dynamism that Russia herself witnessed. throughout three hundred history of Western visitors' perception: the relation between 'I)IlI<oli (foreign, the others invasion into cBoli) and CBoli (the center, a force pushing the other from the place of center to the periphery). The idea-forces that had been established in the domestic atmosphere in the first two decades of the 19th century and reached its peak in the middle of the century were surely enough to give powerful impetus to the Russians to think themselves and to absorb the foreigners' cultural heritages voluntarily even negative remarks to their prejudiced self-images. Then the outsiders' records and views, as it were cultural memories or legacy in short, became conflated into the inside fervor to create what we can call typical Russian one, or something nature that stands for Russian characteristic in general. This dialectic and dynamic process, as Billington sees, are in good harmony with the basic development that Russian history presents. Not only building on the binary contrast Lotman proposes, but following Billingtonian understanding of Russian art history, I make an effort to map out a long historiography regarding views of Russia and the Russians by Western visitors through the 15th and well into the early 20th century of Russia before the October Revolution. Our primary concern here is not to analyze the surrounding theoretical terrain, but to provide an over-arching topography - but not an exhaustive picture - through which we can perceive of a total contour of how the Western visitors' impressions on Russia and her common people had been made. On the other hand, our purpose is to explore how the impressions effectively influenced on domestic debates to 9) James H. Billington (1998) The Face of Russia. Anguish, Aspiration, and Achievement in Russian Culture, New York: TV Books, pp. 16-17. Western Visitors' Views of Russia and the Russians 5 put forth the hinterland's own mythology of the Russianness, namely a concept of the Russian soul. II. Embryonic Stage of Discovery of Russia during the 15th-17th Centuries As Richard Pipes in his introduction to Of the Russe Commonwealth (by Giles Fletcher in 1591) notes, Muscovite Russia, until the 15th century, had indeed been a "terra incognita, 1/10) the land hardly known to the West. Since the mid 16th century, however, the country drew foreigners' attention as a place of legends and secrets. The Westerners' visits to Russia and their cultural contacts with her people rapidly developed by the opening of the maritime route to northern Russia by the English in 1553, as well as the creation of the Muscovy Company in 1555. The result of this epoch-making was the establishment of commercial, diplomatic, and even cultural connections.ll) The growth of Anglo-Russian trade resulted from Richard Chancellor's journey to Moscow during Ivan IV's reign (1547-1584).12) Since then, during the seventeenth century the Russians witnessed a transition as Muscovy embarked on state-building, Westernization, and territorial expansion 10) Giles Fletcher (1966), Of the Russe Commonwealth, with intro. by Richard Pipes, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, p. 1. 11) Iu. D. Levin (1998) has recently overviewed this history between the countries in his essay, "POCCH5I B aHJlHflcKOfi ecceflCTHKe XVIII BeKa," 06pa3 pOCCHH. POCCHJI H PYCCKHe B BOCnpHJlTHH 3analla H BOCTOKa, CaHKT-neTep6ypr: HaYKa, CC. 5-28. 12) Chancellor's account was first published in 1589 in London, as "Principal Navigations," a Russian translation, I/flepBoe nYTeDIeCTBHe aHrJIH'faH B POCCHlO, onHcaHHoe KJIHMeHTOM AllaMoM, IlPyroM lfaHCeJIepa, KanHTaHa ceil 3KCneIlH1!HH H nOCaJlDl.eHHOe I/JHJIHnny, KOPOJIHIO aHrJIHCKOM}',1/ completed and introduced in OT'feCTBeHHhle 3anHCKH, XXVII (1826).
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